Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Yesterday, I commented on how the left will try to make political hay out of some partially-leaked intel. Robert Spencer has the following additional thoughts.

If the report had argued that Iraq has weakened the U.S. position because we are effectively abetting an Iranian-backed Shi'ite takeover of the country, and thus aiding rather than weakening the global jihad, that would be a defensible, indeed a cogent, position. But instead, the report just seems to be noting that Iraq has become the latest pretext for jihad recruitment, and buys into the false assumption that if we just address the pretext, the jihad will end. It won't, however. It will just find another pretext, because ultimately the jihad is not being waged because of Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Abu Ghraib, or Israel, or any other commonly-retailed pretext. It is being waged to extend Sharia over the world, in accord with imperatives spelled out in the Qur'an and other core Islamic sources.

Spencer sums up the entire operating premise of the global jihad here. The jihadists, of course, want nothing less than totalitarian rule, and see each small battle as a means towards that end. Their opponents naively take them at their word every time. In the process, they either yield on what may seem in isolation like some small point or fight (only) a battle whose victory, taken in isolation, is not seen as the minor setback for the Islamists that it is.

It is only when we see this war for what it is and fight it accordingly that we will turn the tide. Compromise is not an option. (HT: Carl Svanberg).

Dr. Hurd on Separation of Church and State

Also through Carl Svanberg's roundup, I learned of a short, but very good piece by Michael Hurd on the value of the secular state.

The separation between church and state is essential for civilization, freedom and human progress. Without it, the United States would not have progressed so far. Contrast the experience of the United States, where separation of church and state has been so strong, with the record of Islamic third-world countries, who either slowly perish in starvation or place all their hopes in the destruction of others through power, as Iran is seeking to do.

Nice lead-in. See how quickly and effectively he makes his case.

Monetizing Blogs

I no longer recall how I encountered this list, but it is an A-Z guide to making money from your blog. The most logical one for me to try would appear to be Amazon Associates.

I consider trying things like this from time to time. My criteria are: (1) Any ads should not clutter up the appearance of my blog, force readers to scroll down to read my posts, or cause pop-up type windows. (Rollovers are even worse.) (2) Implementation is painless, does not take an inordinate amount of time, or require proprietary software. (3) I do not have to incorporate scripts that cause my page to load slowly.

Having said that, I am interested in hearing from anyone (happy or not) who has monetized his blog.

Hilarious Cartoon

Stop byThe Devil's Excrement to see a good anti-Chavez cartoon from Venezuela. Its dialogue translates roughly as:

Chavez: "You are a devil. You smell like sulfur. You are a drunk. You are the demon. You are genocidal. Mr. Devil, you are a Dictator. You are an assassin Mr. Devil. You are..."Bush:"Yeah!Yeah!, whatever you say. Fill 'er up boy!"

I replaced "everything" with "whatever" because that is more colloquial in English to show indifference to what has just been said.

But does he know INTERCAL?

I ran into this Sunday. I think it was at Instapundit, but I can't find it again. In any event, The Chronicle of Higher Educationreports that a blog has declared Mark Chu-Carroll "King of the Nerds". In the sense of someone having very esoteric interests, they have a pretty good case with their selection of the computer scientist-cum-math blogger. Among other things, his blog has a semiregular feature about "pathological programming languages".

So far, however, I have found no mention of INTERCAL. Hmmm. Perhaps he finds it passe.